Is your laptop data safe when using Wifi Hotposts??  
The BBC says NO!

BBC 1’s consumer Watchdog program this week broadcasted a show about the dangers of using free wifi access points, offered by many high street venues like McDonalds & Starbucks. Armed with their own hacker, the watchdog team set about accessing innocent users laptops who were connected to the hotspots. The hacker managed to obtain access to various systems and certain types of data. To watch the BBC program in full click on the this  link

Scary it may sound, but there are some easy ways to protect yourself when using public hotspots.  Smart Computers also offers a range of business solutions  to protect your mobile workers, please see below.

Here are some steps to protect yourself when using public wifi hotspots:

• When entering personal data see if there is SSL encryted versions of website. The site should begin with https://
• Check your folder sharing permissons and use a password protected user account
• Make sure software has all the latest updates e.g. Windows Updates
• Use updated Anti Virus software (For a FREE trial click here)
• Use  a VPN (Virtual Private Network) (Contact Us)
• Use encryted email certificates (Contact Us)

For more advice and information please contact Smart Computers on 01242 580 654

Remote access is the ability to get access to a computer or a network from a remote location  e.g. at home, hotel or anywhere else with a internet connection.

There are many ways to achieve remote access depending on your requirements & budget.

• Remote Desktop: Work on your actual physical PC
• Remote Network: Using Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect to your network resources e.g. Shared drives & files
• Terminal Server: Virtual desktop hosted on company Terminal Server

For more information please contact us at Smart Computers on 01242 580654

Today we see the launch of the ‘Wolfram Alpha’the Internets new computational knowledge search engine. Some say its the new Google with is new method of searching the Internet. Type any questions into its natural english search engine and Wolfram will display the computed results in a neat and easy format.  Read more here

Google apologised for what it called a “traffic jam” that resulted in slow service or even interruption on the internet search giant’s main page.

Gmail and Google’s news site were also reported as “sluggish” or unavailable to millions of users for about an hour.

This is not the first time the company has faced such problems.

“An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our traffic through Asia,” said Urs Hoelzle, a spokesman for the company.

“As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions,” he said. “We’ve been working hard to make our services ultrafast and ‘always on’, so it’s especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens.

“We’re very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we’ll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won’t happen again,” said Mr Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president of operations.

Up to 90% of email is spam!*

SmartFish our hosted email service scans and filters out threats by integrating powerful anti-spam with award-winning antivirus.

SmartFish Scanner will dramatically cut down, the amount of unsolicited mail, received by your organisation. By redirecting your mail through our scanners, our servers will check all your incoming & outgoing mail against well known spam lists and virus definitions, STOPPING unwanted mails from getting onto your network.

Unwanted Spam will waste your company time & money. How many of your employees lose productivity reading and deleting unwanted email? The cost of ongoing IT security, to fight all types of malware and virus, will keep on increasing as spam continues to be used as the main entry point on to your network.
 
How does it work?
· We help you point your Email Exchange (MX) records to our SmartFish servers
· Your mail passes through our server to be cleaned
· At this point our SmartFish scanner, filters through your mail looking for spam, malware & virus
· Mail is compared against well known spam & virus lists, and are given points
· High scoring mails are stopped in their tracks!
· After the scanning process your mail is tagged and forwarded to your mail servers
· A member of your staff, will be given administrator access to check tagged mail
· Any wrongly tagged items can be freed and re-delivered from this console
Source: Gartner Benchmarking Anti-Spam Effectiveness. April 25, 2006 (Gartner customers report that 75-90% of the emails they receive are spam and 2-6% are viruses)

FOR A FREE TRIAL you can telephone us on 0124 580 654 or email us by clicking here  

20,000 plus new samples of malware are detected every day say experts

Security vendor McAfee reports there has been a 50% increase in the number of “zombie” computers hijacked without the owners’ knowledge since 2008.

The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security is needed to ensure the safety of the digital economy.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” said Deloitte’s Greg Pellegrino.

Everything that depends on cyberspace faces unprecedented risks said Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT).

“This issue is moving so quickly, and with so much at stake economically and in terms of safety and security for people, we don’t have 100 years to figure this out,” explained Mr Pellegrino who is a global public sector industry leader at DTT.

McAfee also revealed that the United States now hosts the world’s largest percentage of infected computers at 18% with China a not too distant second with just over 13.%.

“The massive expansion of these botnets provides cybercriminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the web with malware,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee.

“Essentially, this is cybercrime enablement.”

Daily living”

The DTT findings revealed a growing awareness of the role the internet plays in so many different aspects of our lives from security to commerce and from transportation to communication.

“We are seeing this change from protecting the internet to a conversation about how we succeed and prosper in cyberspace,” Mr Pellegrino told the BBC.

“Security spending is growing at a rate never seen before while the threat environment is growing at a pace of 40% a year.

“In terms of volume and severity of incidents, the math doesn’t work and we have to come up with a different approach that requires public and private sectors working together,” Mr Pellegrino said.

“We are talking about daily living” said fellow author Gary McAlum, who is a retired US air force colonel and senior manager of security and privacy services at Deloitte.

“There is a lot of discussion about the economy and the military and the public and private sector, but we have now reached a sense of urgency about the interconnectedness of all these areas.”

That view was echoed by a member of the US military top brass who just gave evidence to a branch of the House Armed Services Committee.

“Our economy, the nation’s critical infrastructure, and many of our military operations depend on unfettered access to cyberspace,” said Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) who also heads the Pentagon’s new Cyber Command.

“Maintaining freedom of action in cyberspace in the 21st century is as inherent to US interests as freedom of the seas was in the 19th century, and access to air and space in the 20th century.”

He has called for the creation of a digital warfare force for the future and has stated that the US needs to reorganise its offensive and defensive cyber operations.

Prominence

The Deloitte study included interviews conducted with government officials and industry experts from around the world.

While it revealed a patchwork approach to the problem it also showed it was one that was gaining prominence.

“We were very pleased that there was a similar tone and awareness and leadership effort coming from different countries across the world,” Mr Pellegrino said.

“Clearly this particular issue has a different context depending on where you are in the world. We cannot afford to go backwards.”

In America, President Obama has made the issue of cyber-security a top priority. Shortly after taking office he ordered a 60 day review that has now been delivered to his desk.

It is understood the release of the review has been delayed by the ongoing H1N1 swine flu crisis. When the report is made public, it is expected that the President will also announce his choice for cyber-security tsar to lead the charge.

While the Deloitte research said security in Asia-Pacific needs to “catch up” it noted that the United Kingdom is in the process of writing a national cyber strategy with an emphasis on public-private partnership.

On the continent, the European Commission has urged member states to co-ordinate on cyber-security measures while in Latin America the report authors conclude that there is a “diversity of approaches.”

Canada has completed its own cyber-security review and this year will be implementing the National Cyber Security Strategy as well as creating a new Directorate of Cyber Security with a mandate to engage closely with the private sector.

Despite all these efforts, the Deloitte authors point out that time is of the essence.

“Not only do we have to take action, we don’t have enough time,” warned Mr Pellegrino.

Mr McAlum agreed and said mapping a clear strategy is crucial.

“We need to get our house in order first so that we can interact with the rest of the world with one voice, with clear roles and responsibilities aligned.”

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) said it was developing tracking technology but “only acts when it is necessary” and “does not spy at will”.

The denial follows the home secretary scrapping plans for a single government database for all communications.

Jacqui Smith said instead firms should record all people’s internet contacts.

In the statement, GCHQ said one of its “greatest challenges is maintaining our capability in the face of the growth in internet-based communications.

“We must reinvest continuously to keep up with the methods that are used by those who threaten the UK and its interests.”

But the agency added: “GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK.

“Similarly, GCHQ has no ambitions, expectations or plans for a database or databases to store centrally all communications data in Britain.

“The new technology that GCHQ is developing is designed to work under the existing legal framework.”

The denial comes days after Ms Smith ditched plans for a giant centralised database to store all internet and phone conversations.

Instead she announced that communications firms will be asked to record all contacts between people.

The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use including visits to social network sites, but not their content.

On Sunday, the Sunday Times newspaper reported that GCHQ was in fact forging ahead with plans to monitor all communications in Britain.

According to the newspaper, £1bn is being spent on a “Mastering the Internet (MTI)” programme that would involve “thousands of ‘black box’ probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure”.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said the GCHQ statement raised more questions than it offered answers.

She added: “There are various comments about what this project is not intended for – but not what it is designed to achieve.

“More importantly, when is Parliament going to have the opportunity to debate it?”

An engineer in Cornwall delivered his baby son after watching a instructional video on YouTube.

Marc Stephens watched the videos as a precaution when his wife Jo started to feel some discomfort.

Four hours later, his wife went into labour and started giving birth before an ambulance could arrive at their home in Redruth.

“I Googled how to deliver a baby, watched a few videos and basically swotted up,” Mr Stephens told the BBC.

Jo Stephens said they had planned a home birth, but not quite in this manner.

“I woke up and realised I was having contractions every five minutes,” Mrs Stephens said.

“I woke Marc up and we phoned the midwife, but they were all so busy they couldn’t come round to our house and told us to call an ambulance. But before it arrived, it all started.”

Read the full story on bbc.co.uk

Here are some compatible phones:

Apple iPhone

• Apple iPhone version 2 or above
• Apple iPhone 3Gs